


Into the Wardrobe

by Whit Merule (whit_merule)



Series: In Other People's Sandboxes [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Narnia, Sabriel Fluff Friday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 03:44:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7084342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whit_merule/pseuds/Whit%20Merule
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel stumbles through a wardrobe in a spare room, into a magical land where it is always winter. There he meets a young Faun called Sam, who has reasons of his own to invite him back to his cave for tea...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into the Wardrobe

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, a fusion with _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ , by C. S. Lewis.
> 
> For the one-year anniversary of Sabriel Fluff Friday.  
> Written to a prompt from [platonic rabbit](http://platonic-rabbit.tumblr.com/).

“This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!” thought Gabriel, going still further in and pushing through the folds of the coats around him. Next moment he found that what was rubbing against his face and hands was not soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly, just like the branches of trees. And something was crunching under his feet—not mothballs, for when he bent down to touch it he found something soft and powdery and extremely cold. And in the next moment he found that he was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time, with snow falling through the air.

Perhaps Gabriel ought to have felt frightened; but he had been very bored in that great gloomy old house, with nothing to do but play hide-and-seek with his brothers and sister, and this felt at last like the kind of adventure that he had secretly hoped would happen to him, out here in the country. He looked back over his shoulder all the same and there, between the dark tree-trunks, he could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of the empty room from which he had set out. It still seemed to be daylight there.

“Well,” said he to himself, “I can always get back if anything goes wrong!”

And so he took one of the coats (“It isn’t as if it’s _stealing_ —I shan’t even be taking it out of the wardrobe!”), wrapped himself in it (though it was rather too large for him), turned up the collar, and skipped forward merrily across the snow.

Soon he saw another light between the trees, and when he reached it he found that it was a lamp-post. As he stood looking at it, wondering why there was a lamp-post in the middle of the wood and how it came to be alight, he heard a pitter-patter of feet coming towards him. And just after that a very strange person stepped out from among the trees into the light of the lamp-post.

He crouched a little as he walked, so that he was only a little taller than Gabriel himself. From the waist upwards he was like a boy, but his legs were shaped like a goat’s (the hair on them was glossy chestnut) and instead of feet he had goat’s hoofs. He had a blue woollen muffler around his neck, and his skin was rather reddish. He had curly chestnut hair that fell about his shoulders, all frosted over with the snow, and out of the hair there stuck two horns, one on each side of his forehead. He was a Faun. And when he saw Gabriel he gave such a start that he almost leaped back into the cover of the trees again.

“Who’s there?” cried the Faun.

“Hello!” said Gabriel eagerly. Then, remembering his manners, he stuck out his hand and said, “Good evening!”

The Faun looked at his hand with a puzzled expression, then put out his own warily and shook it.

“Good evening,” he said, looking hard into Gabriel’s face. “I... excuse me, I don’t mean to be inquisitive, but should I be right in thinking that you are a Son of Adam?”

“My name’s Gabriel?” said Gabriel, not quite understanding him but delighted with his new acquaintance. “My father’s name is Charles. He’s away in the war. What’s your father’s name?”

“My father’s name was Johannes,” said the Faun, “but he isn’t—that is, there’s only me and—but you are what they call a _boy_?”

Gabriel giggled. “Of course I’m a boy!”

“You are in fact... Human?”

“Of course I’m human. What are you?”

“Of course, of course,” said the Faun, and shook the snow from his hair in a flurry of wet white drops. “You see, I’ve never seen a Son of Adam or a Daughter of Eve before. I am honoured. That is—” and then he stopped as if he had been going to say something else, and remembered in time not to. When he spoke again, he was less wary, and more friendly. “Let me introduce myself. I am a Faun, and my name is Sam. How have you come into Narnia?”

“Narnia? What’s that?”

“This is the land of Narnia,” said the Faun, “where we are now: all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle of Cair Paravel on the eastern sea. And you—you have come from the Wild Woods of the West?”

“I—I got in through the wardrobe, in the spare room,” said Gabriel, still more mystified. “It’s only just back there—at least—I’m not sure. It’s summer there!”

“Meanwhile,” said Sam, “it is winter in Narnia, and has been for ever so long, and we shall both catch cold if we stand here talking in the snow. Son of Adam from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?”

“Oh!” cried Gabriel, and clapped his hands in delight. Then he remembered his brothers and sister, and how they must surely be looking for him by now, and perhaps beginning to worry. “But... that is very kind of you, but I’m afraid I must be getting back.”

Sam clutched at his hand, and looked at him with big, earnest brown eyes. “It’s only just around the corner,” he said, “and though it’s a little untidy just now, there’ll be a roaring fire—and toast—and pie? Do say you’ll come, Gabriel—it gets ever so lonely there, now that it’s only just me.”

“Well,” said Gabriel, “I shan’t be able to stay long.” And he took Sam’s arm, and they wrapped the coat around both of them and shared the muffler between their necks, and tripped off together through the snow.

 

***

 

At the bottom of one small valley Sam turned suddenly aside as if he were going to walk straight into an unusually large rock, but at the last minute Gabriel found himself walking into the entrance of a cave. As soon as they were inside he found himself blinking in the light of a wood fire.

It was a little, dry cave of reddish stone with a carpet on the floor and two little chairs, and a table and dresser and a mantelpiece over the fire, and two beds covered with neat skins and furs. One was rather messy, while the other was made very neatly and seemed not to have been slept in for some time: Gabriel noticed with curiosity that there was even dust on the pillow. There was dust in a good many places, as a matter of fact, and Gabriel saw also that there were dishes on the sink, and the table was covered with books and papers and burned-out candles as if Sam had been working late into every night and forgetting to rest.

Sam put the kettle on, though he almost burnt himself as he did so, and Gabriel had to save the tea from scalding. They each of them had a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, and buttered toast, then toast with honey, then a sugar-topped apple pie. And when Gabriel was tired of eating, Sam took out a curious set of pipes bound together in a row and began to play. Perhaps there was a little magic in his music, for as he played the queerest and most wonderful stories began to dance through Gabriel’s head; and what with the long walk, and the good food, and the warmth of the fire, and the strange haunting melody of the pipes, he soon began to fall asleep.

He woke up all at once when the music stopped, and the pipes fell to the floor with a little clatter.

Gabriel sat up, then jumped to his feet: for Sam’s brown eyes had filled with tears, and he was sitting in his chair with his head between his hands and his fingers knotted in his hair, crying helplessly and quietly.

“Sam! Sam!” cried Gabriel, and ran over to him. “Don’t! Don’t! Whatever is the matter? Aren’t you well?”

But Sam continued sobbing as if his heart would break. And even when Gabriel knelt by his chair and put his arms around him and lent him his handkerchief, he would not stop. Gabriel felt that he had never really noticed before just how young Sam was—surely hardly any older than himself—and he could not help being sorry that he should have to live all by himself in such a dark and lonely wood.

“What on earth are you crying about?” he asked, and patted sympathetically at Sam’s shoulder and arm.

“I’m crying because I’m such a terrible Faun!” sobbed Sam at last.

“I don’t think you’re a terrible Faun at all,” said Gabriel stoutly. “Why, you’re the nicest Faun I’ve ever met.” And it was true, too.

Sam looked up at him with sorrowful wet eyes. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew,” he whispered. “I’m a _villain_ , Gabriel. And now I’ve let down my brother, too.”

Gabriel felt a little uneasy. “I’m sure it wasn’t anything too bad,” he said, all the same. “And I’m sure you’re very sorry for it now, whatever it was you did.”

“Don’t you understand?” cried Sam. “It isn’t something I _have_ done. I’m doing it right now, this very moment.”

“What do you mean?” cried Gabriel, turning a little pale.

“It is the White Witch,” said Sam. “It is she who has got all Narnia under her thumb. It’s she who makes it always winter; and she has taken my brother, and I can’t bear to think what she might have done to him. And I thought—I thought if I lulled you to sleep, and handed you over to _Her_ , she might give me my brother back. But I can’t do it, Gabriel, not even for Dean. And now I’ve let him down, and I’ll never see him again!”

“What a wicked person!” cried Gabriel with feeling. “I mean her, Sam, of course, not you. She sounds like the very worst kind of person indeed: just like a German. I am very sorry about your brother, for my father is away fighting the Germans, and he might be killed, and we might never see him again. But you must let me go home!”

Sam dropped his face into his hands and pressed his fingers in against his eyes, to stop the tears. When he lifted it again he looked pale and frightened, but very determined.

“Of course,” he said. “Of course I will. I must. I see that now. I hadn’t known what you would be like. Of course I can’t give you over to the Witch, not now that I know you. But we must be off at once. I’ll see you back to the lamp-post. We must go as quickly and quietly as we can: the whole wood is full of _Her_ spies. Even some of the trees are on Her side.”

 

***

 

The journey back was not at all like the journey to the Faun’s cave. They crept along as quickly as they could, stealing from shadow to shadow without speaking a word. Gabriel was relieved when they reached the lamp-post again.

“Do you know your way from here, Son of Adam?” Sam asked.

Gabriel looked through the trees and could just see in the distance a patch of light that looked like daylight. “Yes,” he said. “I can see the wardrobe door.”

“Then be off as quick as you can,” said Sam. “And can you—and you ever forgive me?”

Gabriel looked at him, then he seized his hand and held it tight. “Of course I can,” he said stoutly. “And Sam—Sam, please come with me! Come back to England with me. You have a war here too, after all, and in the war children are sent away to a safe place to hide. There’s no shame in it. Come and stay with us. I daresay Aunt Amara won’t even notice a fifth.”

Sam smiled at him, then all of a sudden threw himself into Gabriel’s arms and hugged him tight.

“I can’t,” he said. “I must find a way to get my brother back. Farewell, Son of Adam—but—may I keep the handkerchief?”


End file.
